With Syria Action Possible, Is Turkey Safe for Travelers?

Lately I've been fielding worried questions from travelers asking whether they should cancel their planned trips to Turkey, as President Obama gains support for U.S. military action in Syria. While caution in planning trips to trouble spots is smart, one simple fact remains: Syria isn't Turkey.

Lately I've been fielding worried questions from travelers asking whether they should cancel their planned trips to Turkey, as President Obama gains support for U.S. military action in Syria. While caution in planning trips to trouble spots is smart, one simple fact remains: Syria isn't Turkey. Even if the two countries do share a border, it's a long way from Istanbul to Aleppo.

I think the decision whether or not to go to Turkey right now is a highly personal one because every traveler has a different tolerance for risk. If you are the sort of person who will feel anxiety every day up to your trip and during it, then you probably won't have much fun and should cancel. If it were me, though, and I had booked a non-refundable trip to Turkey, and I had to decide today whether to go or not, I would probably go ahead with it. A caveat: If an air strike against Syria occurs while you're in Turkey, the air space over the region could close, which means that you could get stuck in Turkey and be unable to fly home according to your original plan. So, if you must be assured of returning home on schedule, you might want to cancel.

I say this based partly on past experience: I myself was in Turkey when there was a war going on next door. I spent a week in southeastern Turkey in 2006, during the Iraq War—I slept outdoors under the stars in the Mesopotamian desert, in fact, just 50 miles from the Iraqi border—and it was nothing but peaceful and serene. You would never have known a war was happening.

As the situation in Syria (not to mention Egypt) grows more grave—and the U.S. State Department issues predictably alarmist warnings that offer little practical guidance—it can seem as though the entire Middle East is a uniformly terrifying place. But the truth is that, at least in Turkey, travelers feel safe and are continuing to have normal experiences, according to my sources on the ground there and Condé Nast Traveler readers with whom my staff and I correspond frequently. In fact, those readers—who are curious to understand what's really going on in Istanbul and in the broader Middle East—are reporting that now is a fascinating time to visit.

Update, September 6:_ The U.S. State Department has issued a travel warning that "recommends that U.S. citizens defer non-essential travel to southeastern Turkey." That is the area of the country that borders Syria, of course, so the warning comes as no surprise. (The U.K. Foreign Office also warns against "all but essential travel" to the border area.) If your trip includes a stop in southeastern Turkey, you might consider canceling that portion of it, but this alert wouldn't make me reconsider a trip to, say, Istanbul. It's notable that, even though cruise ships are notoriously timid about stopping in countries for which there are State Department warnings and usually cancel such port calls, many still consider southwestern Turkey to be safe and are still planning port calls in spots like Bodrum and Antalya._